The Princess
by smallpaperstars
Summary: Lily Evans is beautiful, and she's fallen for a Beast. Fluffy.


**The Princess**

**Written for LiveLaughLove 013 and Eternally Seventeen in the Gift Giving. Seventeen, I hope your week gets better! :)**

My daughter is a princess, which I guess makes me the Queen.

Her red hair is her crown. It certainly gleams like one in the sunshine. And she is as beautiful as a fairytale. It's caused some trouble for her, and she's a little vain (if I am to tell my tale I must be honest) but she is also kind, generous and sweet. She sleeps as soundly as Sleeping Beauty, loses things like Cinderella lost shoes, and is always so hungry that she would even eat Snow White's poisoned apples.

But to me, she seems most like Beauty from Beauty and the Beast.

~0~

When Lily was young and looked more like a baby carrot than an actual human being, I would read her and Petunia stories. Petunia was soon too old for this, but Lily loved it. I had this big book of fairytales, you see. It had breathtaking illustrations, and its yellowing pages had that wonderful old-book smell, and all the fairytales were original. Did you know that in the original tale, the Little Mermaid turns into sea-foam? Disney certainly glossed over that detail. Lily's favorite story was Beauty and the Beast. It was translated from the original French, so it was as similar to the original as possible.

It begins with Beauty and her two sisters awaiting their father's return. Her two sisters are unkind, and treat her as different. When their father returns, he tells Beauty that he has traded his freedom for hers. Seems a little rough. But out of filial piety she goes to the castle of a terrible beast, where she is kept as a prisoner. Slowly she falls in love with him, and when he is about to die she kisses him and he is turned back into a human. They live happily ever after.

~0~

All I know about James in the early days comes from Lily's letters. He sounds awful – teasing her and her friend Severus, making class unbearable, pulling pranks that sometimes resulted in a hospital visit. Her letters home were filled with vitriolic hatred for him.

_"__Today the odious Potter dropped a bottle of ink on my head. It took me hours to wash it out."_

_"__Potter 'accidentally' pushed Severus down the stairs yesterday and knocked the wind out of him. You should have seen me yelling at him. Good thing Marlene took my wand, or I would have done some real damage."_

_"__I was partnered with putrid Potter for Potions class. I was sorely tempted to switch out our Hiccuping Draught for poison and watch him drink it."_

You never would have guessed that they got married. But then, the same could be said for Beauty and her Beast.

~0~

I love both my children equally. Bu it must be said: Lily makes more out of her flaws than Petunia does.

Lily, at least, recognizes her faults and takes credit for them. Petunia tries to blame those around her. When Lily got admitted to Hogwarts and Tuney was left out in the cold, she took it out on her younger sister. It hurt me to see them fight so bitterly. But what could I do? I wasn't the one with the magic stick to make it all go away.

In the fairytale, the sisters demand that their father bring them back ostentatious gifts. All Beauty asks for is a single red rose. The father loses his fortune and cannot give the sisters what they want, but he steals a rose from the Beast's garden and gets caught (which incidentally is why he trades his freedom for hers. What a wonderful gift). The sisters rage and weep and lay the blame on their father, but Beauty quietly takes up her cross and sets off for the Beast's castle.

Petunia always wanted the world, but it gave her nothing back. She retreated behind her shell of self-loathing. Lily, however, asked for little and got a brand new world filled with magic. She set off for a castle, too, where she found her Beast.

~0~

My Lily loved Beauty and the Beast because of the heroine. Sleeping Beauty did nothing but sleep and be rescued, Cinderella was just a product of her godmother, and Snow White ran away and died until she too was rescued. But Belle was brave. She faced the Beast; she became a savior.

Lily always longed for adventure, and when she got her Hogwarts letter, it was all she could have wanted. Adventure. Mysterious lands. Powerful magic. And eventually a handsome prince.

Usually it's the prince that saves the princess. But Beauty was the one who did the saving.

Lily was the one to turn a selfish, spoiled Beast back into a prince. Over the years, Lily's letters changed.

_"__James helped me study today, even though it meant missing lunch. He's a pretty good teacher."_

_"__I was cornered today by some anti-Muggle Slytherins, but James drove them off."_

_"__James has stopped hexing everyone in sight after I told him that lashing out usually meant unintelligence."_

Watch the princess redeem the Beast. She seemed oblivious that he saw her as more than a friend, but it's a mother's job to notice such things. When she finally came home over the summer, I watched her. She seemed older, wiser, and there was a light in her eyes.

"Darling, how is that Potter boy doing?" I asked her casually one day.

She started, then smiled sheepishly. "Actually, Mother, his name is James. And he's changed."

It took her a few days to tell me that he'd asked her out and she'd said yes. He was coming in a week to take her to Diagon Alley. And yes, she liked him.

"Do you _really _like him?"

"Mum," she complained.

~0~

A few years after graduating, Lily married James. He was no longer the spoiled little pureblood prince he had been. But he knew he was marrying my princess, and he treated her as such. They lived in a cottage, not a castle, but the way Lily talked about it made it sound like Buckingham Palace.

She was glowing these days, just lit up from the inside. Radiant. Every movement bespoke a princess in a ball gown. Lily had kissed her handsome prince. She had saved him from himself. She was Beauty, and he was her prince.

I have a feeling some days that their happily ever after will not last forever. That their fairytale is drawing quickly to the "The End". They are too happy, too in love. The writers of their story are no doubt jealous of their joy. But I'm growing old and foolish. Just looking at them tells me that their love will last forever, even after death.

It's the kind of love that's found in fairytales.


End file.
